Monday, August 29, 2016

New Polish FoW sezon 2016/2017 - How to preapare to tournaments! Part 1

Welcome!

First of all a little background of my profile. I'm playing Flames of War since 2015 (in tournaments) and this is my first miniature system so there is a still a lot to learn :)

From good side I ended in 2015/2016 season on 10th place!

With 8 tournaments played and only 108 points of loss to first place (not bad :P) - I still have a lot to practise but also I'm happy with my achievement!

(There is also worth mention here that in Poland we are using completely different point system on our tournaments than original BF one)

So, with my second season closing in, I need to decide what company I will play now - as what I did previously was bad to my performance - what exactly? and what I could improve to get better results? let me explain and put here some of my thought:

- To have a good list - That is a topic for really a loooong discussion. This is also my biggest problem as I have a problem with commuting to one list and this is one of approaches:

- To have one list for one season - In this way you will be practising this particular build over and over again - this will make you much strong and more confident in your play. It also have it cons (for me for example) that I'm still fresh and I want to test so many lists!

- Have a list for one/few tournaments - That's the way I used to do, almost on every tournament I played I had a completely different list. Those were all Germans lists, as I decided that this will be my army. But I was changing the army types, from infantry though fortified up to Always Attack Tank lists. This was fun of course.... but It was not always good for my performance :) Because no matter how good your list is....

Yes, what is about all those "good" army list's. It is really needed to have an "OP" list? My first impression when I start going on tournaments was that a lot of people that were my opponents had armies straight from the hell! Lists that had so good special rules or so good platoons that I was unable to do anything!

And here is the point, do they really had so good list, armies that cannot be defeated? Or they just played well?

I was not aware of it at begging at this lead me to my second mistake: Don't change your army list often! Learn how to play it first before you decide to look for another! Of course we are talking now about tournaments, not local or for fun play.

My main conclusion is that even a weak list (only from initial judgement) can have a win with really OP one. Of course the skill of both players is a changing factor here, but skill is not the only thing that matters.

First of all and the most important thing is How good you know your list?

Ask your self this question, and what will be the answer? Do you know all statistic of your troops from memory? Do you know all special rules? Do you know strong and weak points of you troops? - knowing that will help you win!

The moment when trooper on the left realized that he don't know the stats of his rifle....

I made those mistakes countless times when I was learning how to play Flames of War. So, you have a warrior who gives you motivation re-roll but you must be in command? so why you forgot to move it with your platoon? Or you made an excellent ambush just to find out that with AT rating of your guns you can do almost nothing to enemy tanks? - this is where your weakens is!

So here is the lesson number 1. If you have an army list, even if you are only testing it, find some time to memorize the rules and statistic's. Of course it will not come easily and with first battle, during the fight emotions can distract you, but playing the same list over and over again will make you more confident - because you will known your army!

So let's sum this up. No matter what list you play, the more you did, you will be better with it! Just by knowing the rules and statistic! And this is the first step to be a competitive player! Now we need to face another problem (the bigger one) what list choose to play.... more about this (and my ideas for it) in next episode!

When you will remember what was written above, the next step will be to think how to build a good list. Army that will be able to win no matter of situation, but this is a topic for another time :)

Let me know in comments (this is the part for the brave of the readers) how you feel about building up a tournament list! Also stay alert for part 2!